Interesting Developments

I've now been in West Africa for two months and have been very busy travelling in both Guinea and Sierra Leone. I have also been busy in Conakry trying to establish an acceptable living situation. As I'm staying here for about three and a half months, instead of the intended three weeks, I had to find an apartment and I finally did so a few weeks ago. With a stroke of amazing luck, I found a small house in a very quiet and calm neighborhood. The latter is almost impossible to find here as everyone lives outside...they cook, clean, hang out, play outside while making as much noise as possible it seems. Anyway, I only have one neighbor who is an elderly lady and her daughter and grand-daughter and they are nice and peaceful. I even have a view of the ocean from my small terrace which is a big bonus!

Other developments are that I was finally able to see some chimpanzees!! I went to Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, and visited a chimp sanctuary, where captured chimps are taken before they can be re-introduced into the wild. They are kept in large forested areas enclosed by electric fences until they can form social groups that would allow them to survive in the wild. A lone chimp cannot survive very long in the forest and needs a family of sorts to protect onself and to gain territory where it can live.

And after having travelled five days out of each week for four weeks straight I got to get some relax time in by going to the islands just off the coast near Conakry. Although it rained, it was nice to be in a boat, sleep on the beach and have a barbecue. Unfortunately, on the way back we had to stop to pick up a young kid that had sliced his pinky finger almost completely off...it was literally hanging by a thread of skin...our boat was faster than the one he was on so we took him with us back to the city. I can officially say the sight of blood does not make me faint but it was difficult to see him in such pain.

On a lighter note, during my many bumpy road trips throughout the interior of the country I have seen some interesting sites...the craziest perhaps was a recycled sedan packed with people inside and on top of the roof of the car, loaded with many other baggages, driving down a bumpy road at night, with the driver holding onto a FLASHLIGHT thru the windowless front of the car! I did a double take when I saw that one.